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“Play as a Team-Do It By the Book”

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Andy Green, the Padres second year manager, is a baseball lifer.

Loves the game, respects the game, wants his players to grow by playing the game.

He’s boxed into a corner, force feeding young players given to him by a front office in full rebuild mode.

Lots of losses, some really bad, some really sad, most attributed to young kids mistakes, or a sub-stardard pitching staff.

The stats do not lie. Too many errors, too many missed cut off men, too man bad angles to fly balls in the outfield. Most of that will be corrected by experience, more practice, and attention to detail.

The pitching solution is still way down road, for this staff is made up of journeymen pitchers at best, and a group of kids thrown into the rotation before most of them were ready. It will be an aging process, though there will be casualties along the way.

Green is an interesting case study. The ‘Gospel according to Green’ involves a lot of old time baseball theology, work hard, respect the game, learn from your mistakes, embrace the opportunity, and the process.

Old school baseball used to be also known as the code. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.

Two controversial plays this week in that Cubs-Padres series at Wrigley Field.

Cubs star Anthony Rizzo going out of the baseline to target catcher Austin Hedges, trying to score. He crushed Hedges, who held onto the ball, but suffered a thigh injury, and has been out since.

Lots of rhetoric about whether MLB made a mistake not fining Rizzo. Past history has shown fines and suspensions for guy who blew up players at second base as they tried to turn double plays.

Joe Torre, the 2nd in command in baseball, admitted Rizzo violated Rule 7.13. How come no discipline?

And how come no Padres pitcher took things in their own hands, by at least knocking Rizzo down in his next-at-bat. I am not saying hurt him, bean him, but maybe plunk him, or dust him back

Been going on since the 1900s in baseball.

Then yesterday, catcher Wellington Castillo blocked home plate with his foot, pinning Craig Stammen’s ankle into the ground. It could have been a horrible injury if Stammen’s spikes had caught in the dirt on his slide.
In this case, the plate was blocked illegally.

The three blind mice umpires failed again to to see or make the right call, or penalize the Cubs for the second day in a row.

And for the second straight day, no Padres pitchers did nothing. None jammed Castillo in his next at bat?

Andy Green preaches lots of things in baseball. Why not the code of the game? Do not take liberties with my players on cheap-shot plays, or answer to it in the next at bat.

Sure this is not much of a season. Sure this may be a 100-loss team. But it is a team, and there is a code, and two risky plays could have badly hurt Padres players.

And nobody had their backs. Nobody threw at the Cubs. And the manager jut decided to carry on with his sermons about baseball.

Teams get unified with incidents like that. We always talk about teachable moments. This should have been one of them for the Friars. “1-for All…All for 1”.

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